Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU (Jan 2009)
Route of the Olympic flame: Beijing as a guardian of the antique cult of the European nations
Abstract
It is without doubt that the 2008 Olympic Games in Peking will be remembered as the most grandiose, most spectacular and most expensive sport manifestation ever organized. Ratings are uniform: it will be very difficult to attain a standard posed by Peking in any recent time. Again, through the organization of this manifestation, China resurfaced as a powerful, wealthy and modern country, ready for the challenges of the 21st century. However, a shadow is cast upon China, in spite of its economic power, due to the country's autocratic political system. China's lack of democracy, human rights and liberties and position of minorities have provoked a harsh criticism among the Western countries, reflected at the time when China was granted Olympic games for 2008. Since then, the criticism continues especially directed at the decision of the Olympic committee, with several calls to boycott the Games itself. Anti-Chinese rallies were intensified this spring, when the Olympic torch started its way from Greece to Peking. Thousands of demonstrators worldwide- defenders of the Tibet's freedom- have tried to stop the carriers of the torch, trying to put out 'the eternal flame' and disable its route to the final destination. The torch has changed its route many times in order to deceive the protestors and takeover was also a subject to change and many manipulations. In any case, the broadcasted scenes of conflict between the demonstrators and Chinese official escorts and citizens, charged with emotions at both sides, will remain as a recall of the Olympic Games 2008 for a long time. Regardless of the possible justified cause of this protest, in the worldwide broadcasted scenes for many months there was a totally paradoxical change of roles: the Olympic flame, as well as the idea, China has defended as its own, as a highest value and also as a source and holiness of its own past and identity, while the Europeans, on whose territory that same idea and values were once created, attacked fiercely those same notions. How are we to understand these contradictory images? How it came about that China experience itself as heiress of the Olympic tradition and how it happened that the pride of the Chinese nation concentrated in the flame, be hurt by the attempts of the European demonstrators to put it out? Modern Olympic Games, founded in 1896, presented itself as one of the echoes of centuries' long fascination of the Antique era experienced by the Westerners. This phenomenon of the Antique admiration has brought about a new redefinition of the European past and civilization ranging from abandoning Biblical story and gradual building of the secular one which we came to call modern history. In that modern history, Ancient Greece and Rome became the two main references about origin. The same process has lead to formation of national states, which, besides making their own national history, had in common the perceived joint origin in the Ancient Greece. Of course, Gauls, Franks or Germanics had very little in common with the ancient Greeks; the common characteristics of the modern European nations are precisely the invention of the Antique images and a firm belief in it as a source of the cultural identity. For instance, the French and British have believed, at the end of the 18th century, they could trace their origin back to the Ancient Greece; in addition, they have managed to successfully 'sell' the story to the modern Greeks and afterward to the rest of the world. In this sense, it is not possible not to see the parallel with the modern China. Adopting the Western model in almost everything, from communist ideology as its first phase of westernization, to liberal economy, and finally to Olympic Games, China implicitly adopts the European story on origin. Critiques however, do not clearly see the range of this discrepancy that the country with such rich tradition has made in the last several decades toward the West. An arrogant colonial European mind holds it understandable that China accepts the Olympic tradition, since it wants to 'look like us'. This same arrogance fails to question, for example, if a golden medal in gymnastics that He Kexin won at this Games, is a victory for China or the West.
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